An Insight into a Whole School Experience: The Implementation of Teaching Teams to Support Learning and Teaching

Abstract

This paper presents some of the emerging outcomes from the experiences of a Maltese school that decided to embrace the philosophy of inclusion using a whole school approach based on the social model of disability. This was a qualitative study based on focus groups. A thematic analysis was used within an interpretative approach of hermeneutic phenomenology. Most schools in Malta now include ‘inclusive’ settings. This entails the use of a class Learning Support Assistant who is assigned to one or more classes where there are one or more children statemented as having learning difficulties. It is the usual practice for most Learning Support Assistants (LSAs) to follow the same child/children exclusively. All too frequently, teachers work separately. The outcome of the teachers' work has little or no effect on and is not affected by the actions of other educators. Teachers do their own work with their class and LSAs do their own work with the disabled student/s in class. The aim of the research was to generally explore the whole experience of one school in including disabled learners. The specific research questions for this part of the study were the following: 1. How can teaching teams reduce the barriers to education for all learners? 2. What practices within this model support or hinder the inclusion and education of disabled learners in a mainstream environment? Finally, there will be an attempt to expose the idealised notions of the fundamental principle of "schools for all". Social justice, disability, equality and human rights issues that underpin the social model of disability are being responded to within the "Special" Education discourse, creating exclusionary practice and inequalities within education.

Keywords

• inclusive education
• learning support assistants (lsas)
• teaching teams